Looking back 40 years to the first London Marathon

Steve Smythe recollects the 1981 London Marathon, which was run 40 years ago on this weekend

If the London Marathon now seems part of the furniture, it’s worth going back 40 years to a very different world of running.

I ran my first marathon in 1976 at Harlow, which was one of the top UK marathons of the time and best known for being the Commonwealth Games trial at the tail end of 1973 where a debuting and then unknown Ian Thompson (2:12:40) sensationally beat Commonwealth champion Ron Hill (2:13:22).

There were 200 runners when I ran at Harlow and that was considered a big field and other UK marathons I ran in the 1977 to 1980 period at the Isle Of Wight, Windsor (Polytechnic) and Barnsley were of similar size. I did venture to Boston in 1977 and Essonne, near Paris, in 1980 and they had a few thousand competitors but a thought of a big UK marathon of a similar size seemed unlikely.

The only people who ran marathons in the 1970s were club runners – and reasonably good ones at that. I comfortably broke three hours in my debut and was not even in the top half of the field.

Chris Brasher’s visit to the New York Marathon in 1979, though, sowed the seed for a similar marathon in Britain and the 1956 Olympic steeplechase champion began plans for 1981 with the help of £40,000 sponsorship from Gillette and also from the Greater London Council (GLC).

Brasher anticipated 3000 or 4000 runners in the first year but there were 21,872 applications and 7,700 were accepted. The day of March 29 was chosen as that seemed to fit into the race calendar and the planning of the GLC if a large part of the capital was going to be closed down.

There was definitely a change happening around this time with regards to competitive running. The Sunday Times National Fun Run was suddenly a big event and a few mass participation lower key marathons had began to appear such as the Masters and Maidens marathon and the People’s Marathon near Birmingham where fast times weren’t compulsory and jogging was slowing becoming fashionable.

The first London, however, still had a large percentage of club athletes, which certainly isn’t the case 40 years later although half the entrants had never previously run a marathon.

I recall the incentive of doing a big home marathon spurred me on to train harder than ever before and I had about 10 weeks of 100 miles a week training in preparation and was in good shape.

I recall picking up my race number (813) at the Strand Palace Hotel on the Thursday – there were no big Expos then but there was a Running Trade Exhibition which is where I presumably picked up my 1981 Gillette London Marathon Tyvek top, which is still in one piece but did not fit me then either.

Despite the excitement of a big UK marathon, it’s safe to say the best of Britain were not particularly interested. The three 1980 Olympians (Bernie Ford, Dave Black and Thompson) chose not to run and other top men such as Tony Simmons, Hill, Dave Cannon, John Graham and Steve Kenyon were not tempted to run either in what would be regarded many years later as a turning point in British marathoning.

It should be noted, though, that Ford was running the World Cross Country Championships the day before, as was Simmons. Thompson had considered London but felt he was not recovered from a recent 2:14:39 marathon in Japan. Andy Holden, third in the 1980 Olympic marathon trials, would have run London but was a late addition to the England cross-country team in Madrid when Nick Rose had to pull out.

Three future London winners, who all ran in the 1980 trial race – Hugh Jones, Mike Gratton and Allister Hutton – were also missing.

AW brought out a special London Marathon Preview issue on March 28, 1981. The cover is maybe curious with Black and Graham – two absentees – although inside it did say they were marathoners to at least provide some link with the distance.

Inside a bumper 56-page issue there was a 32-plus page middle section devoted to the marathon with a detailed preview, course map, spectator and competitor guides and Cliff Temple’s last-minute tips. This also included an excellent eight-page Mel Watman special on great British marathon runners, a Grete Waitz feature, a piece on Derek Clayton’s world record and lists of all previous British and world marathon records and a collection of all the fastest times including the top masters records.

The extra interest in the race saw a bigger advertisement presence with page ads for the Pony British Marathon and Sandbach Marathon (the entry fee was all of £1!) and all the many shoe ads showed you can get the best models for less than £30 although it shows over the last 40 years that race entries have spiralled at a far greater rate than shoe prices.

There were other events covered in the issue such as reports on Steve Jones winning the Inter-Services race and Seb Coe anchoring Loughborough to victory in the Hyde Park Relays. Both Jones and Coe would run in later Londons.

I was lucky enough to live only a kilometre from the start line outside Greenwich Park so recall I left it rather late getting up due to the clocks going forward at 8.15am for the 9am start and I curiously only had a cup of tea for my breakfast but I had carbo-loaded for the previous three days.

The day was drizzly light rain but perfect for running and I started fast – I note am lying about 50th in some of the early photos across Blackheath as Dave Francis took his customary early lead.

The course was not dissimilar to the current one on the red start. After a mile the 1981 route went off the current course along Canberra Road and joined the current blue course at Charlton Park but only briefly before going the other side of the Royal Artillery Barracks along Repository Road and then crossing the current red route to go down Frances Street to join the Woolwich Road at the current four-mile mark. Back then the race was obviously deemed not important or big enough to close the A2 or South Circular Road as it does now!

The route was then pretty much the same – Charlton and Cutty Sark through Deptford, though there was a small one-off loop around Southwark Park before the ever present Surrey Quay loop to Tower Bridge.

North of the river there was a slight detour compared to now going along Cable Street before reaching Poplar High Street (the opposite way to now) and then the Isle of Dogs loop and then Narrow Street also in the opposite way to the current route.

The route then after a brief visit to the Highway (now used in both directions) went along Wapping High Street and along the cobbles alongside the Tower of London (as it did for many years) and then the route followed as per now. But once reaching Buckingham Palace instead of turning right into The Mall at the finish, it carried on up along Constitution Hill briefly.

I remember everything went well during the race, which I did much alongside former English Schools cross-country champion John Lee and Ranelagh’s Dave Wright (and I appear in a photo with them in the official event booklet).

I was pleased to break 2:30 for the one and only time but embarrassed when watching the television broadcast in the evening. Despite being only the 133rd person across the line, I was among the first 10 finishers they showed crossing the line and I did over celebrate – but not thankfully to the Chris Thompson 2021 degree.

The reason I made the highlights was that, unbeknown to me, Joyce Smith was closing on me fast as she ran a British record 2:29:57 to win the women’s race by nine minutes from Kiwi Gillian Drake.

Back then women had few marathons and there had never been a championships women’s marathon – the first was the Europeans in 1982 – but there had been an Avon Women’s Marathon over part of the London course in 1980 and that attracted a much better international field than the 1981 race.

The men’s race was a lot closer than the women’s as American Dick Beardsley and Norwegian Inge Simonsen made a late decision to run in together rather than sprint it out and they crossed the line in 2:11:48, a minute up on 1970 English National cross-country champion Trevor Wright’s 2:12:53.

Michael Kearns, a former British 1500m record-holder, was fourth in 2:13:37 with Graham Laing, Brian Cole, Jim Dingwall, Keith Penny, Paul Eales and 1970 Commonwealth bronze medallist Don Faircloth completing the top 10 inside 2:16:40.

In total 17 broke 2:20, 144 broke 2:30 and 1294 broke three hours, while a very high 6255 finished from 7055 starters.

Dave Bedford. who would go on to become the race director, is not in the official results but did run. At his night club, The Mad Hatter in Luton, he was bet £250 he couldn’t do the marathon the next day and after drunkenly phoning Brasher at 2am to try and arrange an entry, he left Luton at 6.30am and turned up despite zero training in the previous few months.

His time was not known but, after hoping for around three hours, an early morning prawn curry revisited him at halfway and, not looking at his best on the TV highlights, his last three miles took 45 minutes and he was a lot closer to the biggest television personality who was running – Jimmy Savile (4:08:28 in 5292nd) – than he was to the front of the field!

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